Below we present you with some screenies from a High Show sortie the team flew on the 15th of September, 2006. It was our first full-on High Show with collision "HOT" for quite some time and the team performed the entire show without a single mishap, totaling 38 maneuvers within 45 minutes and 20 seconds from wheels up until wheels down. Although the team played it "safe", not flying as close together as we have in the past (collisions "COLD"), safe is a relative term... the team flew only 3 ft apart and performed a very solid show from start to finish. We feel the look and smoothness yielded results eerily similar to the current Thunderbird team and the way they look. Here are a few glimpses all taken from last nights sortie!

I was one of the lucky few that witnessed this show,:D and I can honestly say it was the most fun I've ever had watching an airshow! Lawndart could post screenshots from any moment in the show, and they would look as great as these.

VFAT is the big tomale on the horizon now, but we don't plan on stopping there. We are just now getting to a "Show Ready" state and barring no additional internet related issues (more people, more lag) for VFAT the plan is to make that show a really solid and good one!

Collisions ON or "HOT" was only the next natural step to make everyone perform better throughout this demanding show profile. We just finished up a Live Show and although it was rough by our standards, we're learning the limitations and issues that come along with managing a server and dozens of internet connections to it while trying to fly a solid spacing and not have lag, stutter or both. We feel we're at a level where even given a "bad day" we won't collide and can rely on a good foundation of procedural elements and pre-briefs as well as hitting the maneuver parameters and timing within a buffer close to second nature.

The plan right now is to fly hopefully a few more "smaller" Live Shows before VFAT and continue tweaking computer/sever setups and have VFAT be the best show to date in November. Where we go after that, we still don't know, but it it's destined to point skyward!

Who said we crash often? We've used it for training, so that internet hiccups don't cause the planes to collide and having to reset the server (i.e. losing valuable practice time) while learning new positioning and sight pictures. Makes it more streamlined and efficient. Very rarely have we had any collisions though, even when they weren't being detected and now flying with collisions ON with the current team, we have yet to swap paint a single time...

Just goes to show that training has been very well conducted and everybody knows exactly what they are doing at every instance of the demo. With a learning curve as steep as it is, collisions OFF is a great tool while still learning and to alleviate any minor errors, but mostly to inhibit any internet issues causing disastrous warping whilst making use of limited practice time. In the future if the server connections don't support a lag-free environment with many spectators etc, we'll likely fly collisions OFF again, but as long as the stutters and lag is consistently low we fully expect to have that greater level of danger with collisions ON very present! It makes it much more fun for us.

We just flew a Live Show this past Saturday WITH collisions ON and no mishaps, yet many curve balls as far as the connections internet drop-outs. We're taking it in steps as far as the server and spectators to eliminate as many internet issues as possible so we can continue to fly as tight as we're used to, but with realistic settings as well. I don't think anyone is really affraid of crashing into someone else other than it being caused by LAG as long as everyone stays focused.

I guess for live shows it would make sense for crash settings to be undetected

Just to be clear lqcorsa we flew both of our recent live shows(Friday and Saturday) with collisions on. The exciting thing about this is that after all our hard work and training we were able to do this without a single collision. Please remember that this is appoximately 45 minutes of flying and manuevering and a total of 38 different manuevers. It has taken our team a tremendous amount of work and attention to detail to be able to do this.

I hope our spectators enjoyed what they saw during the show and I know that we as a team look forward to more live shows in the future.

What I say now I say in humble confidence: I am not aware of any team right now that could fly a complete high show in less than 45 minutes using show timing between Diamond and Solos and do it in the virtual world without a mishap. We have raised the bar for ourselves using collisions "on" to make our show even better. Only recently have we gone back into full show practice mode and the practice has paid off. We hope that many of you will be able to watch us fly during the upcoming VFAT event. The guys that fly on my wing are the best in the world and I appreciate their confidence in me as the Boss.